


Little Things

by orphan_account



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-05-15
Packaged: 2018-03-30 17:22:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3945289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To Harrison, the repercussions of the accident were nothing compared to the endgame he had in mind. But it wasn’t until it actually happened, did he realize that life without the ease of mobility was something that he was utterly unprepared for. </p><p>The hardest part, of course, was knowing that he couldn’t give Caitlin what she deserved. He constantly recalls moments from before the accident, little things that he took for granted at the time, but would give anything to have once again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Things

To Harrison, the repercussions of the accident were nothing compared to the endgame he had in mind. But it wasn’t until it actually happened, did he realize that life without the ease of mobility was something that he was utterly unprepared for.

The hardest part, of course, was knowing that he couldn’t give Caitlin what she deserved. He constantly recalls moments from before the accident, little things that he took for granted at the time, but would give anything to have once again.

Like the way Caitlin used to ask for his help in getting books from the top shelf— that was how it all started, after all. She was still on her way to getting her double PhD, and she came into his office one day to ask for help in finding resources for her thesis paper. They hadn’t spent much time together at that point, but when Harrison saw her bright and hopeful in the middle of the night, completely unshaken by the fact that she just burst into her boss’ office asking for help, he knew that she was well on her way to becoming a successful young woman.

“Dr. Wells, could I borrow that one?” Caitlin says, pointing at the book about microbiology and genetic mutation, which was sitting on the highest section of his bookshelf.

Harrison smiles at her. “Excellent choice, Ms. Snow. I’ve read it twice, and I must say even a physicist like myself can appreciate the wonders of the human body.”

“It is pretty extraordinary,” she says as he reaches up for the book, tiptoeing slightly and gripping onto the shelf with his left hand for support. He finally manages to pull it out of the densely packed row and dusts it off before handing it to her.

“All the best for your paper, Ms. Snow,” Harrison says, watching her gleam with excitement upon receiving the book. She’s already tracing her hands on the cover and flipping it open to skim through the front page.

“Thank you, Dr. Wells. I’ll give it back as soon as I finish my paper,” she says, heading off towards the door.

He walks over to his table and watches her before he leaves, putting a hand in his pocket as he interrupts her exit. “Keep it, Caitlin. It’s all yours.”

A grin spreads across her face as she leaves, and he finds himself smiling that night, too. There are other moments he remembers, moments where he found himself smiling a little more than he should have been, and one of those moments were during Caitlin’s graduation.

It was another instance of taking his ability to walk for granted, as he had showed up to her graduation ceremony to hand over her diploma, but ended up dancing with her at the end of the night instead.

“You never told me you were a good dancer,” she says as they both move together, stepping forwards and backwards along with the rhythm. His hands are on her hips, and hers are wrapped around his neck.

“Well, you never asked,” he says, and her eyes crinkle into a smile as he takes her hand and spins her in one swift movement. He pulls her back into his arms and says, “Congratulations on graduating, Dr. Snow. You’re officially a full-time employee of S.T.A.R Labs now, how does that feel?”

She shrugs, eyes playfully looking away as she says, “Not as good as the fact that I’ve got the same amount of doctoral degrees as the great Harrison Wells. Unless, you secretly have three then god would this be embarrassing.”

He can’t help but chuckle in response, as he watches her face quickly turn into a fluttering wave of panic. “I’ve only got two, Caitlin. And you’re absolutely brilliant, don’t you forget that.”

The music pauses just long enough for Caitlin to tell him something through her eyes, and even though not a word is spoken between them, by the time the strings play once again he realizes that he’s fallen completely out of touch with his sense of self-restraint.

The night ends like it should, with Harrison dropping her off at her apartment, with no promises, no invitations to come inside, and no more physical contact than is necessary. (Although, a kiss in the cab isn’t exactly necessary by anyone’s standards.)

So there are the small favors, the dancing, and a long list of other things that used to be so easy, so practical, but was now nothing but a distant memory to him. He misses the freedom of being able to move freely around her, guide her to places, run from lab to lab in the event of an exciting discovery— and now, trapped in a wheelchair, there’s only so much he could do that she couldn’t already do on her own.

And of course, he misses the feeling of having her as his partner, during the nights where the lab went quiet or the nights where she wanted more, needed more than just a man who could help her with her professional career.

It started a few weeks after the graduation. They don’t speak about the kiss, or the dancing, or anything, as a matter of fact. Harrison doesn’t even remember whether it was him pulling her back inside the cab after she’d already had one foot out the door, or whether it was her, rushing back to grab him and meet his lips in a desperate kiss.

By the time they speak again, it doesn’t really matter.

“Dr. Wells,” she says as she peers into his office, with her bag slung over her shoulder and a book in her hands. “Are you busy?”

He looks up from his table and examines her for a brief moment; the look on her face doesn’t give away much apart from the fact that she’s riddled with concern. “No, not at all. Come in, Caitlin.”

“I wanted to give you back this,” she says, walking up to his desk and placing the book in front of him. “I thought you might want it back.”

He shakes his head and looks at her curiously. “That won’t be necessary, Caitlin. I said that you could keep it.”

“I thought you might change your mind,” Caitlin shrugs. “I didn’t want to owe you anything.” She crosses one leg over the other, and Harrison can tell that she’s trying her best to keep a straight face. He isn’t interested in making her crack, and gets up from his seat to walk over to her instead.

He sits on the table and turns towards her. “You’ve never owed me anything, and you never will.” He places his hand on hers, which might have been a mistake, judging by the way she takes a breath and tries to look away.

“Caitlin?” Harrison sighs, after a few moments of silence. He’s almost pleading now, his voice straining in a way he thought it wouldn’t, a giveaway of his true feelings. “Are we okay?”

She then turns towards him, with a certain look of disbelief. “How could you say that? You haven’t spoken to me in two weeks, and I’ve been wondering if I did anything wrong? Which okay, maybe I did, but you were in on it too, don’t act like you weren’t obviously trying to get my attention that night and— I thought you were going to fire me for inappropriate conduct, and I was scared to think that you were just, that you were, oh god.”

“Caitlin, Caitlin, shhh,” Harrison says, leaning in and bringing his arms up to her shoulders.

“Nooo, no, no, no.” Caitlin moves back and swats his hands off. “Don’t ‘shhh’ me, wait.” She takes another deep breath and he watches her, unmoving, trying not to make her any more nervous than she is now. “I thought that you were just, going to pretend that none of it happened. I thought you were pretending that I never happened. That we never happened.”

“Caitlin, I—”

She brings a finger up and says, “No. Just, tell me? Honestly, if you want me to stay. Because, well, I know it’s only been two weeks, but there’s been a guy from the third floor, and he’s been asking for my number, and he’s really sweet and cuter than most physicists I know.”

He must have looked notably bothered by the last statement, as she finally smiles for the first time tonight.

“I did say _most_ physicists." The smile is still there, and if Harrison didn’t have enough reason to love her then this would have been enough for him. Because he’d give anything, anything to preserve that look on her face, the look of happiness. He might not have deserved it then but she did, she always deserves it.

So they kiss again, but this time with a sense of urgency and a desperate need to have the other. Caitlin takes off her coat and drops it on the floor below him. He’s still sitting on the table but he’s being pushed backwards by her, books and papers slowly sliding their way off the edge of the desk.

He ends up with his back on the table, lying flat as she’s kissing him on top. He doesn’t know how he suddenly ended up in a submissive state, all he knows is that they’re touching, she’s touching him, and he’s starting to moan a little bit louder than he should be at this time in the office.

Once he manages to regain a little bit of air, along with his general state of mind, he pushes himself up from the table and starts to undress her. He kisses her from her neck all the way down to the hem of her skirt, where he slips in a finger into her and strokes her until she asks for more.

Soon, the skirt falls, along with several other articles of clothing (mostly his this time) and her legs are wrapped around his waist as he carries her back to the bookshelf where he first tiptoed to give her a book.

He props her up on the shelf, and kisses her again. They both kiss a little longer than they probably should, given the fact that they’re both desperate for some form of release. But there’s just something about the slow, gentle curve of her lips that makes it impossible to stop.

“Dr. Wells,” Caitlin says, breathless as she pushes him closer towards her body.

“Call me Harrison,” he says, taking the hint as he promptly thrusts into her. She’s hot on the inside, and he keeps moving in slick, hard, movements that rattle the bookshelf every few seconds.

They both reach a point when they finally get what they both wanted, with Caitlin’s nails digging into the back of his shoulders and him letting out a sigh of relief as he stops moving inside of her, and instead just stands still as she clenches tight around him until it’s all over.

His thighs are weak afterwards, which is already a thousand times better than they are now, and he stays standing in front of her until she finally catches her breath. There isn’t anything they can say afterwards, and that seems to be true even until this day.

“Dr. Wells, you’re scheduled for a lecture in two hours. What are you still doing here?” Caitlin says, walking into his office as he wheels over to the bookshelf.

“Do you remember this?” Harrison says, holding up the book in his lap. It’s a book on microbiology and genetic mutation. “Gave it to you when you were just an intern here.”

“I do remember,” Caitlin says, smiling as she walks closer towards him. “And if I remember correctly, I gave it back to you. Which is why you have it with you now.”

“Do you remember what we did that night?” Harrison asks, and Caitlin feigns a clueless look, shaking her head.

“You tell me, Dr. Wells,” she says, biting her lip as he lets out a small chuckle.

“I told you to call me Harrison.” He smiles, trying his best to get a response out of her.

She shrugs, walking over towards him and settling behind his wheelchair. “And I keep telling you to call me Caitlin, and yet that doesn’t stop you from calling me Dr. Snow every now and then.” She holds him by the shoulders and rests her cheek on his head.

“Caitlin,” he sighs, because he’d been avoiding this conversation for the past three months and he thinks it’s time they had it. “If, what the doctors say are true, and this…” he looks down at his legs and gestures towards it, “that this is a permanent thing. Would I still be enough for you?”

He hears her sigh from behind him, and she then reappears next to him while giving him a doting look. “Yes. You’ll always be more than enough for me.”

She leans in for a kiss as he strokes the back of her head. “Thank you, Caitlin.”

“As long as you’re still Harrison Wells then there’s nothing that can stop me from telling you how much I love you,” she says into his neck, kissing it gently with her lips slowly tracing down to the neckline of his shirt.

She pulls on the neckline and brings it down with one finger, her lips pressing against him again and again. There’s a small sense of sadness that she can’t sense right now, a disappointed feeling building up inside of him in response to her last remark. She might not understand now, while her hands are touching a body that doesn’t even belong to him, and her lips are whispering a name that isn’t really his, but maybe someday she will. Maybe someday she’ll grow to accept that the man he really is will be enough for her too.


End file.
